by Ann Gosslin
*
Erin looked through the peephole of the observation room. Cassie was awake. Her dark eyes flicked from the window to the door. Was she hoping to make a run for it? But there was no way out, not from this room. No dangling cords or sharp objects, and the window fitted with safety glass. It would be difficult for Cassie to harm herself in here. By law, they could hold her for seventy-two hours. But thirteen were already gone, and the clock was ticking.
A wintry sun cast a weak light into the room. Out in the hall, a resounding tone from the brass Tibetan bowl signalled the start of the midday meal.
Erin pulled a chair close to the bed.
‘You gave us quite a scare last night.’
Cassie coughed and struggled to sit. ‘Where am I?’
She handed her a cup of water. ‘You’re in a clinic called the Meadows.’
Shock marred her features. ‘You mean I’m locked up. Like, with crazy people?’
It was a good thing Erin had the foresight to remove her doctor’s coat. White coats tended to upset new patients. Hadn’t they all seen their share of horror films? Defenceless souls spirited away in the dead of night by white-coated men.
‘You’re not locked up. And no one here is crazy.’
‘I heard someone shouting.’
Erin cast about for an excuse. ‘One of our staff slipped on the ice and sprained her ankle.’ It sounded lame, even to her own ears. She’d always been a terrible liar.
‘Right, whatever.’ Cassie fell back on the pillow. ‘Did Lonnie put me in here?’ Her hand jerked to the cropped hair. ‘She’s going to kill me.’
‘Lonnie? You mean your mother?’
‘Foster mother. She gets a kick out of claiming she’s my real mother. Like she’s Mother effing Teresa or something.’ Cassie picked at the raw skin on her thumb. ‘Always threatening to have me locked up.’
Erin tensed. If Cassie was telling the truth, this Lonnie woman was worse than she’d thought. She reached for her hand, but Cassie flinched and pulled away.
‘Can you tell me about last night?’
Silence. She might have been talking to a stone.
Cassie squinted at the chipped blue polish on her nails. ‘So, if I’m not locked up, I can go home, right?’
‘Not quite yet. We need to understand what happened first.’
‘I was totally wasted. Obviously.’ She exhaled noisily. ‘But I’m fine now.’
To give her some space, Erin moved to the window and considered her next move. Getting anyone to admit they needed help was the difficult, but essential, first step on the road to recovery. Unless Cassie chose to let Erin in, she’d continue to resist any attempt to reach her.
‘You’re not fine.’
Cassie refused to meet her eye.
‘You were found passed out in the snow by the front gate.
It was only dumb luck that one of our staff spotted you.’ Erin allowed this to sink in. ‘If he hadn’t…’
Silence, thick as fog.
‘Did you want to die?’
‘No.’ Her eyelids snapped open. ‘Can I go home now?’
From her spot by the window, Erin watched the clouds move in, bearing a fresh cargo of snow. ‘You mixed alcohol and pills.’ She paused. ‘A dangerous combination.’
Cassie closed her eyes and turned away.
This was the hardest part. Waiting for the brittle shell of denial to crack and fall away. Without a connection to the patient, however fragile, she’d get nowhere. Much of her work involved watching and waiting. For a bridge to appear in the mist, a light to blink on.
But Cassie was done talking. As she slid under the blanket and turned her face to the wall, Erin felt a pang of disappointment.
At the door, she hesitated, waiting to be called back. If the clock ran out before they got through to her, Cassie would walk out the front door and slip from their grasp. Any chance to save her would be gone.
3
Erin jotted a few notes in Cassie’s file. Awake, angry, won’t talk. What’s she hiding? In the music room, someone was plonking out discordant notes on the piano. It was impossible to think straight. Not with the Greenlake file trapped under the desk blotter. She slid it free and snapped it open. A grainy photo, like a bad mugshot, was stapled to the inside cover. Muddy-brown hair. Deep-set eyes of an indeterminate colour. A sickle-shaped scar high on the left cheek. A summary of the patient’s arrest and trial followed, accompanied by a medical history.
Over the years, the patient’s diagnoses had managed to hit all points of the compass – reactive psychosis, schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia, paranoid personality disorder, paranoid schizophrenia. As if his doctors were a band of wanderers struggling to find a path through the darkness. The patient, Timothy Warren Stern, Jnr, was scheduled to appear before a judge on the thirtieth of June, as the final step in his petition for release.
With a flicker of unease, Erin tossed the file on her desk. Why this, why now? Nearly four months back in the country, and her anxiety about returning to America was finally on the wane. It helped that everyone thought she was born and bred in England. A risky strategy, but a means of avoiding bothersome questions about her family and a past she wished to forget.
Her new role at the Meadows was any therapist’s idea of a dream job, and she’d been conscious in the first weeks of the need to make a good impression. With the clinic’s vast endowment, they could treat any girl in need, regardless of the ability to pay. Unlike the Thornbury in London, with its fiscal hardship and penny-pinching ways. And what a relief to be freed from working under the thumb of the Thornbury’s director. Not that Julian was a tyrant. More like a martinet who never failed to remind her of her place in the pecking order and that she’d better think twice before challenging him.
She should be overjoyed, but the Greenlake case threatened to torpedo everything. She angled the photo towards the light. Pale skin. A blank stare. It was the Whidby case all over again. Her instincts were off that time, when youth and inexperience had given her an overconfidence she hadn’t earned. Faced with a similar scenario, how could she be sure her instincts wouldn’t be off again? She hadn’t even met the patient and already her inclination was to keep him locked up. A clear conflict of interest, surely, and the perfect excuse to refuse the case. Niels couldn’t argue with that.
She turned to the window. In the middle of the vast grounds, the branches of the big copper beech swayed and creaked in the cold. After locking the Greenlake file in a drawer, she opened the blinds wide to let in more light. The clouds sweeping in from the river shed a few flakes of snow that soon became a torrent.
Three o’clock. She would give Cassie until five to consider her options. Then, ready or not, she would have to talk.
*
By the time Erin hurried into the coffee house, half-frozen from battling the snow, Niels was already seated by the window. A short walk from the clinic, the newly opened establishment was a beacon of warmth in an otherwise deserted street. For Niels to suggest they meet here to discuss Cassie Gray wasn’t all that unusual – he liked to mix things up a bit – but in this case, it seemed like a ploy. Erin had a feeling she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.
She shrugged off her parka and slung it over the back of a chair. Other than an elderly woman in a red scarf, warming her hands on a mug of coffee, they were the only customers. Niels closed his notebook and slid it into the pocket of his shirt.
‘Tough case at St Vincent’s.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Sixteen years old. Poor girl thought one of the staff was her father and she practically tore the place down. It’s her second psychotic episode, with no signs of mania, so I’m pretty sure we’re dealing with schizophrenia.’
While she studied the menu, Erin listened with half an ear to his rundown of the case. Twenty types of coffee with all the bells and whistles, but only a single choice of tea. With any luck it was a proper blend, and not a stale teabag scrounged from the back of a cupboard.
‘I
t always goes back to the parents, doesn’t it?’ she murmured, placing the menu on the table.
‘Not with psychosis.’
His tone was sharp, and she suppressed a sigh. Here we go again. When it came to mental illness, Niels leaned heavily on the side of biology. Brain chemistry first, psychodynamics second. Which put them in opposite corners of the therapeutic map. Though family wasn’t the only source of their patients’ woes, it played a significant part. And much of their work, whether Niels cared to admit it or not, involved protecting their patients from the very people meant to nurture them.
‘Though in this case,’ he said, flicking a crumb off the table, ‘it does appear that childhood trauma is a factor.’
Across the street, the abandoned warehouses and woollen mills from the city’s industrial past imparted an aura of desolation to this section of the riverfront. A plough rumbled past, heaping dirty snow across the pavement. A barista with a painful-looking eyebrow piercing set a mug of hot water on the table, with the inevitable bag of Lipton balanced on a saucer. How Erin longed for a proper cup of tea, a rich blend of Assam and Ceylon brewed in a pot.
Niels pointed to the mug. ‘A tea drinker in the land of coffee addicts.’ He slurped his cappuccino. ‘You miss London?’
‘Sometimes.’ She poured milk in her tea. ‘Not the rain, though. Or the Tube breakdowns. But a good pot of tea, yes.’ Had she hit all the right clichés? Bad weather, the London Underground, afternoon tea. Anything else might unleash a rash of unwelcome questions.
He wiped a spot of foam from his lip. Freckles dusted the back of his pale hands, the nails clean and neatly trimmed. Not the hands of a Nebraska farm boy, although mucking out stalls and driving a tractor may not have been on his roster of chores.
‘But you’ve been to the States before, right?’
Her face grew hot. ‘Sure. Medical conferences, mainly. Chicago, San Francisco.’ She made a show of rummaging through her bag to shut down the questions. Amongst the crumpled receipts and tubes of lip balm, she located a notebook and snapped it open. ‘Can we talk about Cassie Gray now? We’re running out of time.’
‘Time for what?’ His face was blank, but then the light dawned. ‘You mean put her on a hold?’ He stirred more sugar in his cup. ‘She said the pills were an accident not a suicide attempt.’
‘She talked to you?’ Erin felt stung. Why would Cassie open up to Niels and not to her? Her ability to bond quickly with a patient had always been a source of professional pride.
‘Sure. I couldn’t get her to stop. Said she was at a friend’s, where they took some pills from the mom’s medicine cabinet. Later on, they snuck into a club, where they drank a bucketload of tequila.’
‘Did she say what happened to her hair?’
‘A joke that got out of hand.’ He popped the rest of the brownie in his mouth. ‘As for the home situation, she claims she and her mother are the best of friends.’
‘Foster mother.’
He licked chocolate from his thumb. ‘Foster mother? She didn’t mention that.’
What was Cassie playing at? ‘Okay,’ Erin said. ‘Let’s say, for the sake of argument, she’s not a suicide risk, but she still needs help. If not for the drinking and pills, then for the cutting. Did you see her arms? If that’s not a clear sign of something wrong, I don’t know what is.’
‘I didn’t say she doesn’t need help.’ Niels knocked back the last of his coffee. ‘But it’s not enough to put her on a hold.’
‘I know that, it’s just… I have a bad feeling about what might happen if we send her home.’
Niels paid the bill and pocketed the receipt. ‘If it makes you feel better, I’ll have Janine contact social services for a copy of her file.’ In a hurry to leave now, he stood and zipped his parka to his chin. ‘Was there something about Cassie’s mother that bothered you?’
Foster mother. ‘Nothing specific,’ Erin said, gathering her things. ‘Just the shock, I guess, what with her charging into the clinic like that, all teeth and claws.’
‘Teeth and claws?’
‘You saw her.’
‘What I saw was a frightened parent.’
Clearly, she and Niels operated on a different playing field. If it were up to her, she’d place Cassie on a temporary hold, and then admit her to their three-month residential programme. But her hands were tied. As the clinic’s director, Niels had the final say.
Out on the street, the air was sharp as glass. Together, they turned into the wind and plodded through the drifting snow.
‘What’s the word on the Greenlake case?’
‘I haven’t decided yet.’ She drew her scarf over her frozen lips.
‘Look, I know it’s a hassle, but it’s part of the deal. If the Mr Moneybags supporting the clinic expects a little community work, who are we to complain?’
By the time they arrived at the Meadows’ wrought-iron gate, flanked on either side by a towering yew hedge, Erin could no longer feel her fingers. Through the bars, she could just make out a corner of the glass conservatory, built as an extension on the east wing, an enticing sanctuary in winter, with its profusion of orchids and potted palms. The library and music room, the oil paintings and private chef, the exquisitely decorated patient rooms, all of it paid for by a mysterious benefactor, who preferred to remain anonymous.
She shivered in the biting cold. ‘I’ll let you know on Monday.’
‘Great.’ He slipped his key into the lock. ‘I’m looking forward to giving the board the good news.’
*
Cassie was out of bed and standing by the window, the sheets and blanket in a tangle on the floor.
‘You’re up,’ Erin said, hanging back, afraid to do anything that might spook her. ‘You must be feeling better.’ The silence lengthened. ‘Cassie?’
‘I’m fine.’ She whipped around, her face taut with anger. ‘When can I go home?’
‘I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.’
‘Who says I need help?’ Her knees buckled, and she grabbed the windowsill.
Erin hurried towards her, but Cassie waved her away. ‘I’m not getting back in that bed.’
‘How about a compromise?’ Erin dragged the armchair to the window. ‘You sit here, and I’ll back off.’ She perched on the bed, trying to make eye contact, but Cassie kept her face turned away. ‘What’s at home that you’re so anxious to get back to? A boyfriend? Your foster mother?’
‘Lonnie? Uh, no.’ Cassie curled her lip. ‘The minute I walk through the door, she’ll probably beat the crap out of me.’
Erin stiffened. ‘If she’s abusing you, we’ll need to file a report with social services.’
‘You want to help me?’ Cassie bent over and yanked off the clinic’s white socks. ‘Don’t do anything stupid like call social services. Lonnie’s got her problems, but she’s better than some. It could be much, much worse.’
Lonnie of the slitted eyes and acid tongue. Erin shuddered to think of the life Cassie had led. Neglected. Abused. Shunted from one foster home to another. A copy of her file would give them a better idea what they were dealing with.
‘I’ll let you rest now.’
‘Whatever.’
At the door, Erin turned back. Slumped in the chair, Cassie’s face was slack with fatigue, but her eyes were watchful, alert to the smallest sign of danger. A posture Erin knew well.
‘How long have you been in the system?’
‘Forever.’ Cassie opened her eyes wide and cocked her head. ‘I was a dumpster baby. Happy now?’
4
Hunched against the wind, Erin stumbled on the blocks of frozen snow at the edge of the car park. How easy it would be to slip and break her neck out here. And who would find her in time? The green bobble hat and mittens she’d bought at a Christmas market in Galway offered poor protection from the freezing air. The driver’s seat creaked with cold. By the time Erin inched her car through the icy streets and pulled in front of her building, it was after eight.
The three-storey Victorian house, welcoming enough in daylight, looked bleak and deserted in the dark. A dim bulb on the front porch provided the only light. Long since divided into flats, the house had entered what appeared to be the final stage of its demise. Had it been an option, she would have jumped at the chance to live on the grounds of the Meadows, like Niels, who had a flat in the former carriage house at the edge of the estate. She’d never been inside but imagined it as spacious and light-filled, with a sleek modern kitchen and expansive view of the gardens. How wonderful that would be, freed from the daily battle of the snowy streets. She’d forgotten how brutal the winters were in this part of the world.
The porch railings shuddered in the wind. Moss-green paint flaked off the window frames. But if Erin ignored the scabby paint and neglected garden, the flat ticked all the boxes on her wish list. A private entrance, windows on all sides, and an unobstructed view of the river. A young couple from Honduras, with a baby on the way, lived in the flat below. Her own section of the house spanned the entire top floor, with nothing above her but an empty attic. Mrs Deptford, the elderly widow who rented out the upstairs flats, was thrilled to have Erin as a tenant.
‘How I love an English accent,’ she’d said when they first met. ‘You sound just like Mary Poppins.’ Her eyes had lit up when Erin told her why she’d come to Lansford. ‘What a marvellous thing, helping young girls in need. I’ve always wondered what went on over there, behind that great big yew hedge. Though I still remember when it was a private home, back in my schooldays. Some bigwig from the city would spend summers here with his family. Oh, the parties they held out on the lawns… I would lie in bed and listen to the band play into the wee hours.’ She passed her hand over her eyes. ‘What was their name? Harkness, Hartford. Something like that. I’m afraid my memory’s not what it was.’
Easy enough for Erin to imagine what the house was like as a wealthy man’s summer retreat. The gloss and the glamour. ‘It’s been a private clinic for nearly ten years now,’ she’d said.